Deep thoughts and a snowy walk. With photos!
More folks would've clicked on this if its title had been 69.
I just want you to know that I know that.
Today is my final Monday as a sixty-one-year-old. I'll turn sixty-two this weekend. Those words don't make sense when I hear myself say them. I feel bad that for a lot of my life, I've thought of people in their sixties as old. Now that I'm here, I can say with all certainty that 62 is not anywhere near old. I don't even feel grown-up most of the time.
Getting older is weird. The me on the inside has changed only for the better, in my not-so-humble opinion. And yet my physical form is sixty-two mortal years old. The me on the inside is far, far older. I think the inner me was around long before this current body and will be around long after. But it's not old, my soul. It's ageless. Timeless. Eternal, I hope.
But still, it's sad to see the bod's expiration date ticking ever nearer.
I always get a little reflective on birthdays, and maybe a little more reflective with each successive birthday. I expect to have many more. At least twenty more. Maybe thirty. I'm not in any hurry move on. I just started college, for Pete's sake.
We think we are our bodies, most of the time, don't we? It's only in moments of deep contemplation that we remember we're eternal. But really, from that perspective, I'm not turning sixty-two. My body is. My car has 50,000 miles on it and my body has 62 years on it. Same deal, only the body is one-per-lifetime. (I bet that won't always be the case.)
I was pondering all that when three o'clock rolled around. That's feeding and walkie time for Roxanne, the temperamental mastiff. So we walked.
We are at the beginning of a snowstorm as we trek outside to walk the boundaries of our lawn. We've worn our path so well the deer use it now. We walk no matter what, even in a snowstorm. Only it doesn't feel like a storm. There's no wind at all. The cool air is perfectly still, and the snowflakes are falling vertically. At first they were big and fluffy, but they're smaller now, and so close together that I can't see the hillsides I so frequently photograph. They are hiding behind a curtain of white.
We went quiet as we walked. I took photos. Roxy rolled in the new snow. I imagined Niblet doing a ride-along inside her, and she made me believe it when she rolled again, wiggling her way down a slight incline just like Nib used to do.
Snow feels like peace. It brings a bone-deep infusion of calm. It's the embodiment of Serenity, the name I call my home. I think the reason snow brings this kind of energy with it, is that, while water holds memory, that memory is erased when it changes from water to steam, from pond to mist, from puddle to ice... and from liquid raindop to crystalline snowflake.
Snow is a blank slate. It has no memory, and therefore no judgment. It's perfectly perfect with everything just as it is, with me just as I am, with the world just as it is.They bathed me in their peace, those tranquility flakes.
We didn't have to tell each other to walk a little slower, to take the longer route, to stop and just stand there in the snowfall and the silence. Snow is a muffler. It falls in absolute silence, and any noise that might exist out there can't penetrate.
There's no other kind of silence like the silence of standing in a fall of heavy snow.
It felt a little bit like those heavy flakes were washing all the stress and negativity away. My aura was taking a snow-shower. I felt cleansed and cleared and recharged. I felt like 62 is meaningless. I am me, and I am happy and well. Very well indeed.
I took a little short video of the snowfall. I hope it gives you a little touch of bliss.
Only 42 days until
THE MERMAID MURDUR
